Anyone else ever remember giving something up for Lent when they were young? Even though it hasn’t been a thing in close to two decades for me, I’m reminded of it by two people in the house doing it for the first time in donkey’s years. Okay, one person, my mom to combat her sweet tooth: my brother is merely relaxing on the soft drinks outside of before and after sports training/matches. But that’s still 1.5 more than usual.

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And, here’s December. Christmas is approaching again fast. So much to do, not enough time. Got gifts to decide on and buy, a Jinglemas entry to write, other fics to at least not fully pause work on, plus video games to play and Ponyfics to write and review. A ghost’s work never dies, you might say. But, you know, I’m okay with it. I like being busy enough to not be lazy, without being so busy it gets to be too much. If that makes sense. I’ve at least already read and prepped

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Nice advantage of a Bank Holiday Monday is I don’t have to have Monday Musings^TM ready to go on Sunday night, owing to not working up to nearly posting time of 6PM UTC (distinct from GMT, which doesn’t account for time zones). Meaning I can, and am, throwing this together shortly before pressing submit instead. Not a bad side bonus to national holidays always giving the following Monday off.

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I don’t know about America, but the price of travelling is going up more and more here. Just got booked in for UK PonyCon in October, nearly six whole months ahead, yet the hotel (same as last year) wasn’t even £10 less despite getting there two months earlier. Not even offsetting the £8 increase in ticket price. Then there’s the flights and if train prices will be different by then… yep, the worldwide travelling cost spike in the wake of COVID sure isn’t slowing down!

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It’s probably not a surprise I don’t play party multiplayer games much. What I have said in here has probably spelt out that I prefer games with clear, linear objectives with definitive ends, and while I’m all for playing with friends, in person or online, doing the same against strangers runs its course once I’m used to the game. So it was certainly an experience last Friday when I found myself playing that (by now ancient ) early lockdown hit, Fall Guys.

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I guess I’m looking forward to Pokémon Scarlet and Violet coming out on Friday, though I tend to play new Pokémon games at my own pace these days, which is less hectic than most people’s need to finish it in a week. My association with the franchise these days is a little grey in places, and the online community is to blame for that partially, to the point I often tend to just enjoy it on my lonesome more often than not. To a degree, anyway.

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Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if this week’s Monday Musings sailed by most folks, what with Hasbro and Netflix, in their infinite wisdom, dropping nearly three hours of G5 content across eight Make Your Mark episodes on us today. I’ll certainly be watching at least a few of them. Regular readings know of my expectations, but I’m gonna continue to largely keep them out of these Ponyfic Reviews. I doubt they will affect the fics here much, either in the short term or the long term:

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I am often struck by random-yet-interesting thoughts as I go about my day. That’s not worthy of note. But just as I was pasting today’s reviews from my master review workfile into this week’s lot, I noticed the publication years of the fics, all different except for two, and spread over the site’s history. It got me to thinking: is that true of my reviews as a whole, or do I lean more towards certain years or eras of Fimfiction?

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I have quite the habit of timing my finishing of a video game – be that the main campaign, 100%’ing it, or just to the goal or stop point that I’m satisfied with: whatever I’m gunning for at the time – right as the next game that will be my big one for a while comes out. I’m sure that’s hardly unique, many folks probably do the same, especially when direct sequels of the game they’re currently playing are on the horizon. But it can take many forms, I find.

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Ghost Mike, Ponyfic Review Monday Musings #66, 12^th June 2023:

we’ve reached that point in the generation where everyone internally knows the writing is on the wall and are already refocused on the future. […] The lack of announcement of further content for G5 beyond the initial episode orders […] only further intensifies this.

Well, that aged well.

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What’s this? Halloween, you say? You know, it used to be an exciting time for me. Even as an adult, the last few years, I’d look forward to a little pumpkin carving, at the very least. But eh, lately I haven’t even done that. This year hasn’t really broken that trend. It’s not alone – most one-day holidays tend to glaze right by me these days, over in a flash. Honestly, though, it doesn’t bother me much. I certainly want to get back to carving a pumpkin every year, but otherwise, it’s fine, I

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Some minor but important housekeeping this week: I finished adding the word counts of every reviewed story to the spreadsheet Archive. Somewhat annoyingly, despite double-checking the story lengths and accounting for the two de-listed stories (I’m sure my fellow Ponyfic reviewers will baulk that only two of 250 have been removed), the word count is still off of that in the Reviewed bookshelf here… by forty-nine words.

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When I started out these Ponyfic Review Monday Musings, I didn’t have any definitive goals, beyond reaching the end of that calendar year. Which I did, evidently. And truth be told, both before achieving that and after it, I didn’t see a situation in which I didn’t make it to the one-year milestone. So even now, it doesn’t feel like that big a deal.

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You know, no matter how much I tell myself this is the year to get Christmas preparations sorted nice and early, they always build up towards the end. This despite me indeed getting some done early. But between yet more Christmas shopping, other bits and bobs, and a Jinglemas story that has been a slow nut to crack, I’ve got a hectic week ahead. Even with today being my last day of work until the new year.

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Happy 2023, my friends! I hope you all had a good holiday. Mine was okay; uneventful, and I still allowed myself to get stressed over nothing for stretches. But towards the end, I relaxed and loosened up, and it did me some good. If nothing else, I’m resolving to try and go with the flow more this year, continuing to work hard on what matters, but allowing myself to have fun, in casual and dedicated hobbies, without worrying or guilt-tripping myself as much.

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Now that I’m over 100 fics in, about high-time I provide easier access to the review backlog, me thinks. Got a public archive of the reviews available now! Currently, it’s just a single tab with the fics in review order and links to the blogs, though it also contains the fic title, author, rating, and whether it was a reread and if it was listened to via a reading, and by whom. In the

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What’s this? Ghost Mike actually has some news! Well, yes. I had quite the weekend, my friends. It was my parents’ 30^th anniversary yesterday, and as they passed on any celebration for their 25^th​​, they decided to have a massive gathering here. 60-odd people (a mix of family and close friends), catered buffet, the works. Been a long time since a family gathering (in part) was anything that size, even omitting COVID, we’re all just older and busy with our lives.

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Yeah, so my statement of reverting to a random menagerie of fics this week wasn’t quite true – after my first Author Spotlight back in Ponyfic Review Monday Musings #19, I’d agreed to myself to make them a semi-regular thing going forward, perhaps in the range of one every month or two. Well, last week of August, time for some queue shuffling! For the sophomore Author Spotlight, I’ve chosen

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